Civil War and the Collapse of the Social Bond
The Roman Tradition at the Heart of the Modern

The Roman tradition represents civil war as a political matter that cuts to the heart of family, sexuality, and society.

Michèle Lowrie (Author), Barbara Vinken (Author)

9781316516447, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 October 2022

360 pages, 7 colour illus.
23.7 x 15.9 x 2.5 cm, 0.7 kg

Can civil war ever be overcome? Can a better order come into being? This book explores how the Roman civil wars of the first century BCE laid the template for addressing perennially urgent questions. The Roman Republic's collapse and Augustus' new Empire have remained ideological battlegrounds to this day. Integrative and disintegrative readings begun in antiquity (Vergil and Lucan) have left their mark on answers given by Christians (Augustine), secular republicans (Victor Hugo), and disillusioned satirists (Michel Houellebecq) alike. France's self-understanding as a new Rome – republican during the Revolution, imperial under successive Napoleons – makes it a special case in the Roman tradition. The same story returns repeatedly. A golden age of restoration glimmers on the horizon, but comes in the guise of a decadent, oriental empire that reintroduces and exposes everything already wrong under the defunct republic. Central to the price of social order is patriarchy's need to subjugate women.

Introduction
1. Figures of discord
2. Oriental empire: Vergil, Georgics
3. Empire without end: Vergil, Aeneid and Lucan, De bello civili
4. The eternal city: Augustine, De civitate Dei
5. The republic to come: Hugo, Quatrevingt-treize
6. The empire to come: Houellebecq, Soumission
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1]